Read Online A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) by Kaye Gibbons - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kaye Gibbons
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Some times it’s easier to stop thinking about things than others, but then how many people do you know who’re able to get off a loop as easily as they got on it? Daydreaming, loving the wrong man, smoking, all habits hard to break.
9•
T he night before Burr and Tiny Fran got married I didn’t sleep not one wink, worrying, worrying, worrying. I worried about it all. I ought to’ve slept though, as hard as Frances’d run me all week. “Do this. Do that.” Kept me busy as a one-arm paper hanger, pruning the hedgebushes, arranging pine straw, cleaning out the chicken house. By the time Saturday rolled around I was so tired I thought I might liable not to be able to stand up for Burr, but I did. Pissed Frances off too, me standing up front at the wedding. I know it did. But I didn’t give a whit. That was I and Burr’s business. He’s like a son to me.
About all I had to look forward to at that wedding, besides being Burr’s best man, was seeing Ruby. We’d been hanging right tight since John Woodrow died. It wasn’tanybody else there I gave a happy hurrah about, like all Frances’s out-of-town family. They didn’t have the slightest notion what was going on that day. Burr told me they had the impression him and Tiny Fran had been courting a fair amount of time. Now I wonder where they got that? I wanted to say to Frances, I wanted to ask her, “You really think you’re slick, don’t you? Here you are trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes.” I guess she thought shaking Tiny Fran’s pooched-out self into that shift-looking dress, and it white, would fool her folks. But I thought, Frances, you just wait till nigh about five months from now and here’s Tiny Fran and a teeny baby and see if they don’t start counting on their fingers.
And you can damn well bet old preacher what’s-his-face from down at Ephesus wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He’d gotten wind of the mess from somebody at Porter’s store and he wasn’t touching it. They had to bring in a civil somebody. And I could’ve put another dollar down on Burr’s mama and daddy not showing up. I know they both stayed shut up in the house all day, his daddy probably worrying the tar out of Burr the whole time he was trying to get his clothes on.
Burr’s daddy, Leon, was a mealy-mouth sonofabitch if there ever was one, same age as me, always treated me like I didn’t have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. He’d go around out here withhis big old cigar in his mouth, smiling like Franklin D. Roosevelt, acting he was happy as he could be to be a poor dumb old working man, but you knew it was the opposite true. Then he’d go home at night and beat his wife, beat Burr too. And then poor Pansy died like she did, up sewing in the middle of the night.
Used to he used to go sit at the store, rear back, rub that great big belly of his and say, “Well, I’ll tell you, I might be just a poor old working man, but I’ve got the sense to see Lonnie Hoover might ought to sell that hay for a dime more a bale if he expects to turn a profit on it,” or “Nobody’s going to ask me what I think about it, me being just a poor working man, but if they did I’d tell them Lonnie might ought not to plant that back field with fescue again this year.” You wanted to say to him, “That’s right. Nobody gives a damn what you think, so shut up,” but it wasn’t worth the air. You just rolled your eyes. And then his only boy marries a Hoover and gets that back field and now he’s one of the ones that’s not going to ask Leon his opinion.
After Burr got married I remember how Leon had his heart attack and they laid him out. I went with Burr and stood there with him looking in the casket and he told me, he said, “All my daddy ever wanted was a nice suit of clothes, a fine automobile, and some respect.” Burr’d bought a hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit to bury him in. Leonwould’ve set fire to it if
9•
T he night before Burr and Tiny Fran got married I didn’t sleep not one wink, worrying, worrying, worrying. I worried about it all. I ought to’ve slept though, as hard as Frances’d run me all week. “Do this. Do that.” Kept me busy as a one-arm paper hanger, pruning the hedgebushes, arranging pine straw, cleaning out the chicken house. By the time Saturday rolled around I was so tired I thought I might liable not to be able to stand up for Burr, but I did. Pissed Frances off too, me standing up front at the wedding. I know it did. But I didn’t give a whit. That was I and Burr’s business. He’s like a son to me.
About all I had to look forward to at that wedding, besides being Burr’s best man, was seeing Ruby. We’d been hanging right tight since John Woodrow died. It wasn’tanybody else there I gave a happy hurrah about, like all Frances’s out-of-town family. They didn’t have the slightest notion what was going on that day. Burr told me they had the impression him and Tiny Fran had been courting a fair amount of time. Now I wonder where they got that? I wanted to say to Frances, I wanted to ask her, “You really think you’re slick, don’t you? Here you are trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes.” I guess she thought shaking Tiny Fran’s pooched-out self into that shift-looking dress, and it white, would fool her folks. But I thought, Frances, you just wait till nigh about five months from now and here’s Tiny Fran and a teeny baby and see if they don’t start counting on their fingers.
And you can damn well bet old preacher what’s-his-face from down at Ephesus wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He’d gotten wind of the mess from somebody at Porter’s store and he wasn’t touching it. They had to bring in a civil somebody. And I could’ve put another dollar down on Burr’s mama and daddy not showing up. I know they both stayed shut up in the house all day, his daddy probably worrying the tar out of Burr the whole time he was trying to get his clothes on.
Burr’s daddy, Leon, was a mealy-mouth sonofabitch if there ever was one, same age as me, always treated me like I didn’t have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. He’d go around out here withhis big old cigar in his mouth, smiling like Franklin D. Roosevelt, acting he was happy as he could be to be a poor dumb old working man, but you knew it was the opposite true. Then he’d go home at night and beat his wife, beat Burr too. And then poor Pansy died like she did, up sewing in the middle of the night.
Used to he used to go sit at the store, rear back, rub that great big belly of his and say, “Well, I’ll tell you, I might be just a poor old working man, but I’ve got the sense to see Lonnie Hoover might ought to sell that hay for a dime more a bale if he expects to turn a profit on it,” or “Nobody’s going to ask me what I think about it, me being just a poor working man, but if they did I’d tell them Lonnie might ought not to plant that back field with fescue again this year.” You wanted to say to him, “That’s right. Nobody gives a damn what you think, so shut up,” but it wasn’t worth the air. You just rolled your eyes. And then his only boy marries a Hoover and gets that back field and now he’s one of the ones that’s not going to ask Leon his opinion.
After Burr got married I remember how Leon had his heart attack and they laid him out. I went with Burr and stood there with him looking in the casket and he told me, he said, “All my daddy ever wanted was a nice suit of clothes, a fine automobile, and some respect.” Burr’d bought a hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit to bury him in. Leonwould’ve set fire to it if
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